19 Nisan 2017, Çarşamba
saat: 08:41
Remember that student who wrote a horrific (and quite racist) review of the Lemon Tree, with complete disregard of the context and without any attention to intragroup differences? His paper proposal also had a very problematic (and highly essentialized) thesis statement that indirectly called for the annihilation of an entire human community. It could have easily been reported as hate speech, but I thought that would only strengthen his beliefs in the validity of his proposal. So I followed a different approach with my department chair's approval: I simply asked questions. I avoided the content issue to a large extent, and questioned his methodology. Forced him to think deeply about his "easy" solution to a very complex problem. Mentioned a few negative cases and raised the question of how these cases could be explained with his framework. I gave an alternative answer to the puzzle he was working on and told him showing the weaknesses in this alternative explanation would make his point more compelling since his theory could easily be dismissed with several counterexamples. AND, IT WORKED!!!
I received his final paper today, and his entire position had been changed! He totally dropped that essentialist attitude, took a much more moderate stance on the issue, actually made very good points in explaining this complexity AND admitted that he was not aware of these nuances & that his research took him to a much more complex but elegant conclusions. YES!!! SUCCESS!!! I felt so accomplished as I helped someone understand no group is monolithic & the world was not that black and white. This feels like the exact lesson we all should be getting at this particular point of time.
Bottom line: Teaching is hard, so reminiscing about the small victories can really be therapeutic!
